


A Family Dinner

by beetle



Category: Bewitched
Genre: F/F, F/M, Family Drama, Fluff and Humor, Future Fic, Gen, Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-15
Updated: 2014-05-15
Packaged: 2018-01-24 22:23:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1619108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the prompt(s): Three generations were seated around the dinner table</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Family Dinner

**Author's Note:**

> Notes/Warnings: Getting this story is easy if you watched a lot of staple 60s/70s television.

Three generations of Stephens women were seated around the dinner table, and dinner? Was _not_ a happy affair.  
  
“Dad would’ve _hated_ this idea,” Tabitha Stephens muttered into a spoonful of soup. In the silence that followed her declaration, the polite slurp was as loud as a gunshot.  
  
“Grandpa would’ve been totally YOLO about it,” Cassandra Stephens insisted, dunking a piece of homemade, buttered bread into her bowl of the famous Stephens tomato-squash soup. Then she hummed to herself, chewing happily when she took a bite. “He’d have wanted for you to go for it, Gram!”  
  
“No, he would _not_!” Tabitha exclaimed before Samantha could respond to her granddaughter’s claim. “This is our _home_! I grew up here! Dad bought this place for us all! He’d want it to stay in the family! _Salt!_ ”  
  
The delicate crystal salt shaker obediently slid across the dining room table and into Tabitha’s waiting grip. She started to up-end it over her soup. . . .  
  
Samantha Stephens sighed and, nose wrinkling and twitching, opened her hand . . . then Tabitha was glaring at her as the crystal shaker reappeared in Samantha’s own hand.  
  
“You’re just like your father. You’d salt an apple if you thought you could get away with it, sweetheart,” Samantha chided with a fond smile and Cassandra snickered. “Remember your blood pressure.”  
  
“Pah,” Tabitha said, tossing her shoulder-length blonde hair. Her pretty blue eyes were wide with offense and incredulity. “You’d really sell _our home_ and buy an _Airstream_? Ramble across America like some sort of—of—indigent?”  
  
“Well,” Samantha said, face crinkling in a way that Tabitha, much like her father, was unable to stay angry at. “I won’t be indigent, dear. I’ll have plenty of money left over from the sale of the house, as well as . . . _other resources_ ,” she added without putting too fine a point of the fact that she was one of the most powerful witches in the continental United States. “Besides . . . I won’t be going alone.”  
  
Tabitha paled and her spoon dropped into her soup with an offended _ploop_. “Who are you going with? Please don’t say Uncle Arthur or Cousin Serena!”  
  
“Boss-sauce! Uncle Arthur and Cousin Serena are the _best_!” Cassandra exclaimed, her dark-blue eyes dancing with excitement.  
  
“No, no, good heavens, me!” Samantha laughed, waving her hand dismissively. The salt shaker floated from it and into the kitchen and Tabitha watched it go with a sigh. “Stelios Antonopolis will be accompanying me.”  
  
“Our _florist_?” Tabitha all but screeched at the same time Cassandra fist-pumped the air and crowed: “Ow! You _go_ , Gram! Gettin’ some lovin’ from the sleek Greek!”  
  
Tabitha hushed her daughter and turned to her mother pleadingly. “Mother, he’s not a witch—”  
  
“Neither was your father,” Samantha reminded Tabitha gently. This silenced her daughter for all of ten seconds.  
  
“He’s almost seventy years younger than you!” she complained—practically wailed.  
  
“But wasn’t Grandpa, like, forty years younger than Gram when he and Gram started dating?” Cassandra asked with fake innocence thick enough to go sledding on. Tabitha spluttered.  
  
“B-but that’s _different_!”  
  
“How?” Samantha and Cassandra asked simultaneously, and Tabitha spluttered again.  
  
“It just _is_!”  
  
“Gee, nice to see you’re not just being arbitrary, Mom,” Cassandra muttered, then paled and focused on her soup when Tabitha shot her a _look_.  
  
“Mother,” Tabitha then began, obviously trying for reasonable. “Does he even know you’re a witch?”  
  
“I told him last night, over dinner. He took it very well,” Samantha added brightly. “He said he wants to come on my adventures across America even more, now. I think the fact that I’m a witch is kind of a turn on for him.”  
  
Tabitha groaned and buried her face in her hands for a few moments and Cassandra wisely held her peace. But when Tabitha looked up, there was a triumphant light in her eyes. “What about his _flower shop_? How’s he going to manage it if he’s off traveling with _you_?”  
  
“Oh, that.” Samantha waved her hand again. This time, a small dish of parmesan cheese appeared in it with a small silver spoon. She began sprinkling cheese into her soup. “He’s selling the shop to his middle boy, Nikos. So that way there’s still an Antonopolis running the show.”  
  
“Hmph,” Tabitha said, slurping up more soup. And: “Well, at least _Antonopolis Flowers_ gets to stay in _his_ family.”  
  
Brow furrowing, Samantha sighed and reached out to put her hand on Tabitha’s. Tabitha drew her hand, and a tear rolled down her face. “Oh, sweetheart,” Samantha said sadly.  
  
“Mom, are you okay?” Cassandra asked tentatively. Tabitha nodded quickly.  
  
“I’m fine. Just—seeing as you’ve made up your mind, Mother, this _will_ take some getting used to,” she said stiffly, her voice restrained, but still hurt. She looked down into her soup and stirred it as if looking for signs and portents. Indeed, Tabitha Stephens-Borcher was the most sought after hydromancer in the world. If anyone could see signs and portents in the famous Stephens soup, it would be Tabitha.  
  
But if she saw anything, she didn’t enlighten the other two women as to its contents.  
  
“Sweetheart,” Samantha starts again, tenderly. “Your father’s been dead for fifteen years, but I . . . I’m still _alive_. I still feel and want and need companionship. And now that my child’s all grown up and so’s my _child’s child_ , I feel like it’s at last time for me to get out there and see the world, again.”  
  
“But do you have to sell the house to _do it_?” Tabitha sniffled, and finally looked up at Samantha once more. Her eyes were red and shining with unshed tears.  
  
“I wouldn’t be here to take care of it, dear. Wouldn’t be able to keep it clean and nice. And it wouldn’t be fair to ask either of you to do that in my absence,” Samantha added when Tabitha opened her mouth to protest. She grimaced when Tabitha deflated at her words. “At least if I sell it, maybe someone nice will come here and fill the house with love and happiness and children.”  
  
Cassandra _hmm_ ed and then spoke hesitantly. “Gram, what if—and I haven’t spoken to her about this, yet, so this is purely hypothetical—but what if . . . what if _Liv and I_ bought the house from you?”  
  
Samantha regarded her only grandchild with startled eyes. “But Cass, honey, you’re so young! You and Liv, both. You’ve only been living together for a year.”  
  
“Gram, I’m twenty-three!” Cassandra tossed her red curls—she was the spitting image of her great-grandmother, down to the fiery red hair—and sighed. “And a year is a _long time_!”  
  
“Practically forever,” Samantha murmured, almost smiling in the face of her granddaughter’s sincerity. “But still, honey, you’re very young—too young to be settling down so finally—”  
  
Cassandra rolled her eyes. “Gram, Mom and I have already had this talk. I may be young, but I know what I want. I always have.” She glanced at her mother for agreement, and Tabitha sniffed, but nodded, hope kindled in her eyes.  
  
“It’s true, Mother. She’s the most headstrong child for at least two generations. She’s just like Grandmother. More so, even. And probably at a younger age.” Tabitha lamented, but smiled a bit.  
  
“And Great-Gram got married and had a house and family by the time she was seventeen!” Cassandra asserted, as if making an irrefutable point. “I’m six whole years older, and I’ve known what I wanted since I was four: the wife, the kids, the two-story in suburbia . . . the only things I’ve been waiting for are the right person—and Liv _is_ that person—and the right house. What better house than _this one_?”  
  
“Oh, I don’t know, sweetpea. . . .”  
  
“Mooooommmm—make Gram see _reason_!” Cassandra whined, pouting in a way neither mother nor grandmother had ever been able to stand for long against. Tabitha sighed as if giving in, and threw up her hands in resignation. Though it was quite obvious she was fighting a big smile.  
  
“Well, you were going to sell it anyway, Mother.”  
  
“Yes, but—”  
  
“And you want it to go to someone who’ll love it and take care of it and fill it with happiness, kids, the whole nine, right?” Cassandra aimed that pout at her grandmother. “Please? If you sell it to anyone, sell it to me and Liv.”  
  
Samantha glanced at her daughter, but Tabitha was currently finding her soup very interesting, stirring it once more for signs and portents.  
  
“I can see I’ve been out-voted,” Samantha finally sighed, taking up her napkin and dabbing primly at the corners of her mouth. Cassandra whooped and Tabitha looked up, smiling so big and hopefully, she looked like a child. Samantha sighed again.  
  
“Alright, darling. _If_ Liv wants to take on this old pile, I’d be happy to sell the house to you two,” she said warmly, smiling.  
  
“Oh, _Gram_!” Cassandra jumped up and skirted the table to hug her grandmother tight from around the back of Samantha’s tall chair. “I love you so much!”  
  
“And I love you, too, sweetpea.” Samantha put her hands on her granddaughter’s and squeezed.  
  
Cassandra laughed and sniffled, glancing over at her mother. “Get over here, Mom! The more, the merrier!”  
  
Tabitha hemmed and hawed, but she _had_ been looking a bit left out. She joined the other two women and wrapped her arms around her mother and her daughter. “Really, you two . . . such histrionics over a _business transaction_!” she said, and Samantha and Cassandra leaned back to look at her incredulously. Tabitha blushed and spluttered some more. “I’m just saying, is all.”  
  
Samantha and Cassandra shared a look that turned into a laugh, which resulted in a very put out-looking Tabitha. Still laughing, both women hugged Tabitha close again, and soon, there was nothing to be heard but whispered: _I love you_ s.  
  
And so, none of the three witches noticed the two ghostly presences peering at them through the kitchen wall. Neither did they notice when both presences drew back into the kitchen, and grew even less substantial . . . until they began to disappear altogether.  
  
“Told ya they’d work it all out, Endora. My granddaughter’s a smart one,” the first ghost said smugly to the second as he slowly faded. The second ghost, also fading, huffed and crossed her arms over a garish muumuu in iridescent, peacock blues and purples.   
  
“Oh, shut up, Dum-Dum,” echoed briefly before, like the two ghosts, vanishing into the aether.  
  


END


End file.
